Semrush Position Tracking: Setup, Reports and Limits

What Position Tracking is, and what it is not

Position Tracking is Semrush's daily rank tracker. It follows a fixed list of keywords for one domain in one location and on one device, alongside up to 20 competitors, on Google, Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode. Rankings can be monitored across mobile, tablet and desktop and down to the postal code, and the tool flags SERP features such as AI Overviews and featured snippets along the way. It also tracks any keyword and any domain, even ones missing from Semrush's main database. That is the key difference from Organic Research, which shows whatever Semrush happens to find. Position Tracking reports only the keywords you chose.

This guide covers setup, the settings you cannot change later, the reports worth reading and the limits by plan. It draws on Semrush's help center and pricing pages, read from the US on 12 October 2026. Some setup mistakes cost history you cannot recover. So setup comes first.

Setup decisions you cannot undo

Choose the target and the engine

The target can be a root domain, subdomain, subfolder or single URL ^[1]. Semrush recommends starting with the root domain, since rankings for subdomains and URLs are stored in the history anyway. That advice also prevents a common scare: a campaign set to a subfolder can show no rankings at all when another part of the domain ranks instead.

You can track Google, Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Baidu works only at national level on desktop, and some SERP features, such as AI Features and AI Chat, can be tracked only in Bing campaigns. Most users need Google first. Bing matters for audiences on Windows defaults, ChatGPT and AI Mode for brands whose buyers now ask assistants instead of searching, and Baidu only for companies selling into China. For nearly everyone else, the honest starting point is a single Google campaign. Add others with care, since each one is a separate campaign.

Pick the device and the most specific location

Choose desktop, phone or tablet, then a country, state, city or ZIP code. Semrush advises picking the most specific location you target, because results differ even between ZIP codes in one city. This matters more than it looks, because the original location and device are fixed once a campaign starts. The settings menu does allow a location change, but all previous historical data is lost.

Check both before you press Start Tracking. A wrong city costs weeks of data. If you need the same keywords tracked in two cities, or on both mobile and desktop, plan separate campaigns from the start. Extra campaigns inside one project need the Guru or Business tier, a point we return to under the plan limits below.

Enter the business name for the local pack

For local campaigns, enter your business name exactly as it appears on Google. Semrush uses it to find the local pack results that include you, so no abbreviations and no shortened names. Local pack rankings then appear with a pin icon in the rankings table. Type the name carefully.

Building the keyword list

Where keywords can come from

Keywords can come from manual entry, a TXT or CSV file, another campaign, Keyword Strategy Builder, Semrush reports, Google Analytics or Google Search Console. In a CSV, only the first column is read, so strip any extra columns before you upload. New keywords need up to an hour before rankings, volume and CPC appear. Do not panic at blank rows.

The Google Analytics import deserves a warning. It pulls the terms in GA4's manual campaign report, the Session manual term field. Those are campaign terms, not organic queries. For organic queries, import from Google Search Console instead. Either connection can be revoked later in your Google account's security settings.

City-level campaigns can switch between local and national search volume at any time. If a small place shows n/a for volume, Semrush suggests trying a larger location, such as the city instead of a neighborhood. The rankings stay local either way. Only the volume column changes.

Tag before you start

You can tag keywords in the setup sandbox, either with one common tag or a tag per keyword. Semrush suggests tags by topic, intent, volume, difficulty, branded versus unbranded, and location. Tagging now pays off twice: the Tags report needs tags, and retagging later makes historical charts jump. Later, add smart tags from filters, for example every keyword with volume above 1,000 tagged as high volume. Saved tags replace filters you would otherwise rebuild every week.

A checkbox at setup also turns on a weekly email summarizing how many keywords rank in the top 3, 10, 20 and 100. Scheduled spreadsheet exports, daily, weekly or monthly, are a separate feature limited to the Business tier. For most teams, it is enough.

Competitors, and the history they get

A campaign can hold up to 20 competitors, and they can be domains, subdomains, subfolders or URLs. The trend chart shows five domains at once, including yours. Add the rivals you lose sales to, not only the biggest sites in your niche. Competitors also get a privilege your own keywords do not: history backfilled to the campaign's start. Semrush's example is a campaign created on 1 November 2024, with two competitors added on 1 November 2025, that still shows their weekly positions from November 2024.

Competitors Discovery helps you find the names you missed. It maps every domain ranking for your keywords, sized by visibility, showing the top 10 by default, while the table can list up to 100. Winners and Losers views show who gained or lost, and up to 20 domains can be ignored. Its estimated traffic figure is modeled. Read it as a ranking of who benefits most from your keyword set, not as real traffic.

How fresh the data is, and how long it lasts

Data updates daily, within 24 to 48 hours, so update times drift ^[2]. Updates are automatic and cannot be scheduled. Semrush calls this daily cadence the industry standard, but search results shift several times a day, so do not judge a change on one day's data. Daily points are kept for 60 days. After that, the data shows weekly points, on Wednesdays by default, kept for 140 weeks. That is about two years and eight months of weekly history, by our arithmetic. A monthly client report will rarely miss the daily points. A team studying how a core update hit its rankings over a few days should export the daily data before it is folded into weekly snapshots.

The rules for your own history are stricter. History starts on the day the campaign is created, and earlier rankings are not available. A keyword added later has history only from its own start date. Delete a keyword and its history is gone, even if you add it back. Think twice before cleaning up the list.

Reading the core metrics

Visibility is a click-through-based percentage of how visible a domain is in Google's top 100 for your keywords ^[3]. It is 0% with no rankings and 100% with first place for every keyword. It rewards breadth. A campaign full of long-tail keywords can show a healthy percentage while sending little traffic, so check the estimated traffic line, which estimates daily visits from current positions, before celebrating in a client report. One table detail also surprises clients: a Knowledge Panel counts as position 11 unless a page also ranks higher, as in Google Search Console.

Average Position counts any keyword where you do not rank as position 100. That makes it harsh on new campaigns: add ten keywords you do not rank for and the average can jump toward 100 in one day. Share of Voice weights results by search volume and estimated traffic, not keyword count. In Semrush's example, one keyword with 30,000 searches outweighs ten with 50 each, so first place on the ten small ones gives high visibility but low share of voice. In the Overview chart, it needs the Business tier.

The reports worth opening

Landscape, Rankings Distribution and Pages

Landscape is the quick summary of visibility, traffic, top keywords, biggest gains and losses and top landing pages, and its Summary widget describes recent changes in plain text. Check it first each week. Rankings Distribution compares you with competitors by the number of keywords in the top 3, 10, 20 and 100, each count opening the matching keywords. Semrush suggests treating a competitor's lost and declined keywords as targets. The Pages report lists every URL that ranks for at least one tracked keyword, with keyword count, average position, total volume and estimated traffic. New pages started ranking during the period; lost pages dropped out of the top 100.

Cannibalization, tags and SERP features

The Cannibalization report finds keywords where two or more of your pages rank in the top 100. It shows a Cannibalization Health score, the share of keywords free of the problem, and View by Keywords shows which pages compete. An interrupted trend line marks a ghost page that appears only now and then. When two pages trade places week after week for the same keyword, the usual fixes are to merge them, to point one at the other with a canonical tag, or to rewrite one so it serves a clearly different intent.

The Tags report tracks share of voice, visibility, estimated traffic and average position per tag group. It needs the Guru or Business tier. On Starter or the SEO plan, tags still work as filters in the Overview. The SERP features filter finds keywords with local packs, featured snippets, AI Overviews and more, where you rank or where you do not. The Featured Snippets report lists the snippets you could win. Snippets reward a short, direct answer near the top of the page, so rewrite the first paragraph before the whole article.

Paid results, devices and predictions

The table can switch from organic to paid keywords from Google Ads, which reveals whether competitors pay for visibility on your keywords. If they do, an organic first place may still sit below three ads. The Devices & Locations report compares the same keywords across devices and places and can produce a single PDF for every location you monitor. For a business with several branches, that replaces a report per city. The Potential Growth tab predicts visibility, estimated traffic and average position. These are Semrush estimates. Use them to rank work, not to promise results.

Notes and exports

Notes mark dates when you changed a page, launched a campaign or added keywords, and Semrush adds automatic notes when keywords are added or removed. Without them, a ranking jump six weeks later has no explanation. Reports export to Excel, CSV, Google Sheets and PDF. PDFs can be emailed, scheduled or branded, though branding needs the Pro tier of My Reports. A PDF of a filtered tag gives a client report for one product line.

Tracking AI search alongside Google

Position Tracking can follow ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode alongside Google. Prompt Tracking, part of AI Visibility, adds Gemini and counts positions by citation order. Estimated traffic and share of voice are not yet available for AI engines, so treat AI positions as a separate scoreboard. A page can hold first place on Google for a keyword while ChatGPT cites three other sites for the matching question, and the reverse also happens. Reporting both side by side tells a client more than either number does alone. For the wider AI toolkit, see our guide to Semrush AI.

Limits by plan, the free account and the trial

These limits come from the pricing page and Semrush's free account guide ^[4], and more keywords can be bought from the Overview when you reach the limit. Five hundred keywords across five sites is 100 keywords per site, by our arithmetic. That suits a business with a few service lines. An agency with ten clients needs Pro+ for the sites and the keywords. Plan the list before the plan.

Multitargeting is the other limit agencies hit. Guru and Business users can add campaigns for other devices, locations, languages and engines inside one project, though duplicate campaigns are not allowed. On Pro or without the SEO toolkit, deleting a campaign means deleting the whole project. Note that the help center names tiers (Pro, Guru, Business) differently from the pricing table above, so confirm which current plan carries Multitargeting and the Tags report before you buy.

A free account tracks 10 keywords for one site. Updates are still daily, ZIP-code targeting works, and projects carry over when you upgrade, so the free plan is a cheap way to start the history early. Ten keywords are enough to watch a local business's core services. In a paid trial, Semrush's own guide says to set up Position Tracking early, because it updates daily and the trial lasts seven days, and to add one or two competitor domains at setup. The trial blocks exports. Judge the reports on screen. Our page on whether Semrush is free covers the free account in full.

When the numbers look wrong

Position Tracking shows unpersonalized results for a set location, while Google personalizes by location, history and language. Even incognito searches may not match, and volatility adds noise because results change during the day. Clients often ask about this, so keep the help article ready. If a campaign shows no positions at all, first check its scope. A campaign set to a subfolder or URL shows nothing when another part of the domain ranks instead, so switch the scope to the root domain. If that fails, open the SERP snapshots from the Rankings Overview table to see what Google actually returned. Start there.

A fifteen-minute weekly routine

A well-built campaign needs little attention after setup. Landscape is the first screen to check, the Cannibalization report earns a look whenever you publish, and the rest takes minutes. Fifteen minutes is enough. The steps below use only the reports covered above, in the order we would open them. Here is the routine:

• Read the Landscape summary.
• Check lost keywords in Rankings Distribution.
• Open the Cannibalization report after any new content.
• Add a note for every page change.
• Once a month, review Competitors Discovery for new names.

The bottom line

Position Tracking is accurate, flexible on location and now covers ChatGPT and AI Mode. Its weak spots are the rules around it: location and device fixed at setup, history lost when you delete a keyword, and tags and Multitargeting reserved for the Guru and Business tiers. Set it up carefully on day one, and the tool then needs little attention. For how it fits the rest of the suite, read our Semrush review.